PDF Report: User wants to generate PDF's in batch using the NEW PDF editor

  • aibworld
    Asked on December 18, 2018 at 12:26 PM

    I have a couple different PDFs created and customized for different forms.  For my "AIB Chapter Annual Report" form, I have a "Chapter Reports" PDF that I have customized, and have set it up so that I receive a PDF via email every time the form is submitted.

    But, I'm struggling with how to get to those PDFs efficiently from the "My Forms" page. I found three different way to download PDFs.

    1) On "My Forms" page, if I click on the specific Form, and then Reports on the menu at the op and then choose the appropriate report, I get to that PDF edit screen, then I can move through the submissions one by one and print them.  This works but is inefficient.

    1545153496chrome 2018 12 18 12 13 57 Screenshot 10

     

    2) If I instead click on submissions, so that i can more efficiently find the exact submission that I want a PDF for, and then click on PDF --> Download PDF,  this seems to default to another template I created, and not to "Chapter Reports PDF" which is what I want associated with this form. Then I have to manually switch from one template to the other.  This is more inefficient, because i have to change to the correct template every single time.

    1545153678chrome 2018 12 18 12 19 25 Screenshot 21 

    3) Finally, at the bottom of the Submissions screen, I can click on "Download as PDF" which allows me to download all the PDFs for the filtered submissions as a single PDF file. But the formatting of these PDFs are generic, not the template PDF I have created, and they also don't follow the naming conventions i defined, but instead use the submission date in the file name.  More efficient to allow multiple PDFs to be downloaded, but gives me the wrong format and wrong name.

    1545153957chrome 2018 12 18 12 22 40 Screenshot 32

    So, what am I doing wrong?  Am I missing a setting somewhere that allows a specific template to be associated with a specific form, so that all PDF downloads go to the same template?  It seems like depending on which option I choose, I get a completely different PDF file. And it does not look like there is an easy way to get the customized PDFs downloaded in batch. 

    Any help would be appreciated.

     

  • jherwin
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 2:21 PM

    Unfortunately, it is not possible to download batch/bulk PDF submission at the moment in new PDF report/PDF editor.

    I will forward this to our back-end team, so an option to download a batch of PDF submission can be added in the submissions page. If this gets implemented, you will be updated via this thread.

  • aibworld
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 2:30 PM

    Thanks, I look forward to seeing that feature in the future.

    Meanwhile, just for clarification: so it is currently normal behavior that the three options give three different results? There isn't a way to identify which PDF should be associated with which form?


  • jherwin
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 3:50 PM

    Chapter Reports and Download PDF - This is similar to the report you will receive when you download your PDF form report. So they are the same. However, the problem when you download PDF in submission page(#2 question). It shows the wrong PDF report.

    As you can see, the report showing is the SIG Application form not the AIB Chapter Annual Report. To fix that, please delete the SIG Application PDF Form template and PDF will ask you to create a new template and PDF layout for the new PDF Template.

    See screenshot below:
    1545165789PDF one Screenshot 10

    Download PDF as batch (your #3 question) - Since the new PDF editor is unable to download batch PDF's at the moment, it will download PDF but in the old pdf layout.

  • aibworld
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 4:35 PM

     

    (I deleted this question, since i tested out and found out that the PDF reports are per form and not global.  So, deleting the SIG application PDF template as you suggest for that form does not delete it from the other form which uses that specific template.)

    Thanks for the help!

  • aibworld
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 4:36 PM

    Separately,  for the batch download, is there way to customize the old pdf layout you refer to, without losing the template created for individual PDFs with the new PDF editor? 

  • jherwin
    Replied on December 18, 2018 at 6:18 PM

    You can switch to the Old PDF editor and set "New PDF Editor" to "No" in your form settings to customize the old pdf layout. However, I can not guarantee that your new PDF layout will not change because you can only generate a one PDF report on each form. So if you switch to old, possibly it will change the new PDF layout.

    If you want to proceed, please follow this guide:
    1.) Go to My form SETTINGS > Show more options> New PDF Editor = No.
    1545175068nopdf Screenshot 10

    2.) Then, go to PDF editor, it will show OLD PDF layout.